SKYLON

Researching “space-frames,” the subject I originally planned for this space, I re-encountered images of the London Skylon, which I hadn’t seen for a very long time.  Structurally related to space-frames through tensegrity principles, I thought the Skylon was much cooler and a more compelling subject, a lost icon obscurely embodying the inchoate aspirations of the age which is my age.  

Built as the symbol for the 1951 Festival of Britain, a popular contemporary joke about Skylon went that, like the British economy of 1951, Skylon “had no visible means of support."

Named by Mrs A G S Fidler, wife of the chief architect of the Crawley Development Corporation, Skylon was designed by the team of Hidalgo Moya, Philip Powell and Felix  Samuely (who also acted as engineer and ensured structural safety).  The monument was fabricated by Painter Brothers of Hereford, England on London's South Bank between Westminster Bridge and Hungerford Bridge.  Its base was nearly 15 metres (50 feet) from the ground and the giant silver rune reached a height of nearly 90 metres (300 feet).  Skylon’s frame was sheathed in aluminium louvers, which were lit from within at night.

More than any of the other “international exposition” type monuments I remember from my youth, including the disappointing Tent of Tomorrow and its accompanying Unisphere from the 1964 New York World’s Fair and their quite magical 1939 fair predecessors, the Trylon and Perisphere (which my parents had seen and told me about), Skylon seems to embody all future hopes and present cluelessness and confusion.  As such, it remains eternally relevant.  Quo vadis?  Who knows?    

And now that U.S. president Obama has definitively stated: “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that;  somebody else made that happen,” I’m forced to wonder about my own past (and the provenance of any success I may have achieved) as much as about my future.  I’m executive-directed to understand that my hindsight is no longer 20/20 and that any proud memories I might have had are merely self-flattery.  Who on earth is actually writing this?  Somebody else?  What do I tell my daughter?  Am I now meant to discard the photo albums also and substitute strangers' pictures?

  

The circumstances of Skylon’s removal and demolition, which were ordered by Winston Churchill in 1952 as part of a desire to remove indicia and evidence of the Labour government that preceded his return to power, remain a mystery wrapped, as they say, in an enigma.

Our modern design series will continue shortly with an exploration of the “peek-a-boo shower,” a bizarre hotel room phenomenon I recently experienced, which has me completely flummoxed.  

Until then:

Graham Parker -- You Can't Be Too Strong (Link)

Doctor Who Theme -- Ron Grainer and Delia Derbyshire (Link) 

A Soldier Dresses (Julian Maclaren-Ross)

      

World War I British Junior Officer (subaltern) with Sam Browne belt.

            My brother used an open razor, leaning his head with its black widow’s peak of hair sideways and close to the mirror, for he was short-sighted; his cheeks shone blue as the blade scraped the ladder away, with that glabrous bloom I have since observed on the faces of certain priests, Monsieur L’Abbe among them: and more than a trace of Jesuitical severity was stamped even now upon his features in repose, though this vanished when he smiled. 

Razor

           I had never seen anyone shave before – my father of course was bearded, nor would I have been admitted while he was performing his toilet – and the whole process fascinated me:  the flick and sweep of the cut-throat steel which never drew blood, the stropping of the blade in readiness for the morrow, the astringent lotion dabbed on after. 

Strop

     There was a moment equally absorbing, when he drew on the brown supple boots which came up below the knee and were worn with knife-creased khaki breeches.  The boots, the Sam Browne belt, and also the buttons and brasses of his tunic and greatcoat were polished personally by my brother (for he had brought no batman) until they shone, in the case of the leather, almost purple and you could see your reflection in miniature in the crested brass. 

Boots

Insignia of 1st Battalion, Warwickshire

          The only regret I had (one not shared by my brother) was that, as a subaltern, he no longer had to wear puttees; during his first leaves, when he was a private, I’d enjoyed seeing him winding these expertly, without creases, round his legs, though I was to be thankful later that this practice had died out before my own enlistment.  The boots, however, more than made up for the puttees absence; then, when he’d adjusted his belt, the rimless monocle – a relic from the days of his roistering with which he used sometimes to give his startling impersonation of a Prussian officer – would be screwed into its socket, where it remained immovable, without a cord; his cigarette lighter was flourished at an Abdulla Egyptian in a short amber holder, and he was ready to come down to another day.

Prussian With A Monocle

A group of World War I subalterns (Future Prime Minister Harold Macmillan second from right, top row)

Winston Churchill as a subaltern, UK 4th Hussars, February 1895

From Julian Maclaren-Ross, The Weeping And The Laughter.  London, Rupert Hart-Davis, 1953.

Post dedicated to James Reed Roberts (b. 2-22-54, d. 8-13-70)